Ad filtering
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ad filtering or ad blocking is a service which removes or alters advertising content in a webpage. This content can be represented in a variety of ways including pictures, animations, text, or pop-up windows. More advanced filters allow fine-grained control of advertisements through features like blacklists, whitelists, and regular expression filters. Certain security features also have the effect of disabling some ads.
The immediate benefits include cleaner looking webpages free from advertisements and lower resource-usage (bandwidth, CPU, memory, etc.). One drawback is that advertisements are a major source of revenue for many websites. However, the actual loss of revenue, when present, is difficult to measure.
Contents |
[edit] Browser integration
Almost all modern web browsers include a pop-up blocker. Opera and Konqueror also include content filtering, which prevents external files such as images or JavaScript files from loading. Content filtering can be added to Mozilla Firefox and related browsers with Adblock or Adblock Plus. Another method for filtering advertisements uses CSS rules to hide specific HTML and XHTML elements.
[edit] External programs
A number of external applications offer ad filtering as a primary or additional feature. A traditional solution is to customize an HTTP proxy (or web proxy) to filter content. These programs work by caching and filtering content before it is displayed in a user's browser. This provides an opportunity to remove not only ads but also content which may be offensive or inappropriate. Popular proxy software which block content effectively include Privoxy, Squid, Proximodo, and Proxomitron.
[edit] Hosts file
Further information: hosts file.
[edit] Common advertising techniques
- Pop-up ads
- Plain text
- Ad banners
- Flash animations
- Keyword hyperlinks (for example Vibrant Media's IntelliTXT[1])
- Browser plugins/extensions (often labeled as adware)
- External applications (see adware, spyware)
[edit] See also
- Online advertising
- Adblock extension for Mozilla Firefox
- Scroogle, a screen scraping proxy that allows users to perform Google searches without receiving Google advertisements
- Hosts file filtering
[edit] External links
 |
This software-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
